Dr Tanya Josev

Senior Lecturer

Overview

Tanya is a BA LLB (Hons) and PhD graduate of the University and a former editor of the Melbourne University Law Review. Tanya researches in contemporary Australian and American legal and political history, with a current interest in the origins and evolution of the binary understanding of the judicial role as involving 'activism' and 'restraint' across various common law jurisdictions; and in judicial biography. Recent articles include an examination of the status of judicial biography in Australia in the University of New South Wales Law Journal, and a narrative account of the first fifteen years of the judicial activism ‘debate’ in the United States in Studies in Law, Politics and Society.

Tanya's doctoral thesis in law and political history concerned the intellectual and political history of the concept of 'judicial activism' in the United States and Australia. The thesis was awarded the Dennis-Wettenhall Prize for the best thesis in Australian history in 2015. Her book on the topic, The Campaign Against the Courts: A History of the Judicial Activism Debate was published by the Federation Press in 2017.

Tanya has previously worked as a commercial litigation lawyer at Allens and as an associate to the late Justice Alan Goldberg AO of the Federal Court of Australia. She was one of the Law School's inaugural PhD Teaching Fellows, and, in 2010-11, she was based at New York University's School of Law through her appointment as a Hauser Global Fellow. Her research has been supported by scholarships from the Australian Federation of Graduate Women, the Alma Hansen Bequest, the Hauser Global program at NYU, and various other prizes.

She teaches The High Court in the Twentieth Century (legal research); the Law of Obligations; Legal Method and Reasoning; Corporations Law and the breadth subject Principles of Business Law, and has previously published in related areas.

Her research interests extend from Australian legal and political history to private law topics.

Memberships and Affiliations

Editorial Board, Legal History (journal) Australian Historical Association Australian and New Zealand Law and History Society Socio-Legal Studies Association (UK) Law and Society Association (US) Law and Society Association of Australia and New Zealand